Monthly Archives: May 2018

Bitcoin (BTC), Cryptocurrency, Opinion

The Five Keys to Crypto Evolution

So the doomsayers were right all along. Crypto was nothing but a bubble and it finally burst.

Good.

Maybe you’re surprised to hear that coming from me, someone who’s dedicated more than a few words to the power of crypto to change the world. Did I suddenly have a change of heart? Did I jump on the Paul Krugman bandwagon and finally realize that Bitcoin is evil? Did I join the naysayers who laugh with glee every time the price drops and arrogantly shout that Bitcoin is going to zero?

Nope.

I say good because the circus has finally left town. The cameras have packed up and gone home. The reporters are losing interest. The story is finished.

And now the crypto community can get back to doing the hard work of building the future in peace and quiet.

Cryptocurrency Art Gallery: Litecoin, Ether, Ripple, Bitcoin and Namecoin (Image: Namecoin/Flickr)
Cryptocurrency Art Gallery: Litecoin, Ether, Ripple, Bitcoin and Namecoin (Image: Namecoin/Flickr)

I’ve always said the bubble would burst and in the long run it wouldn’t matter in the least. In retrospect I think Bitcoin getting to $20,000 so fast was the worst thing to ever happen to the community. For years, Bitcoin was nothing but Internet geek money and something to laugh at, but when Bitcoin’s price rocketed higher and higher, it suddenly became something else entirely:

A threat.

Bitcoin’s furious rise scared the hell out of banks and governments everywhere. Banks saw their business models crumbling as programmable money took the world by storm and governments feared they might lose their iron-fisted control of the money supply. Authoritarian regimes raced to crush it. Regulators came out in force. The press unleashed a torrent of articles filled with fear, uncertainty and doubt.

But now as Bitcoin’s price recedes the frenzy of ignorance and fear will die with it and the community can get back to work.

Read more: HackerNoon

Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Blog, Dash (DASH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Gunbot, Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Trading

Gunbot Crypto Trading 5: Emotionless Trading

Previous posts:

Trading So Far

The situation as we left it in my last post is that Gunbot had made 3 complete buy-sell trades of 0.002 BTC each using the ‘Emotionless’ strategy. It had then bought again, and hadn’t seemed to be able to sell again that day. In fact early the following day it did manage to sell, and then later that morning it bought and sold again quickly. Each trade was, naturally, profit making, though only to the tune of about 10p.

Emboldened by this I increased the stake for each trade to 0.005 BTC (about £33). Gunbot soon did another Ether trade, for a profit of about 27p, so a healthy gain of about 0.8%.

I was impatient to see more trades and profits at this point, so I increased the stake to 0.01 BTC and added further coin pairs:

  • Bitcoin – Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
  • Bitcoin – Litecoin (LTC)
  • Bitcoin – Ethereum Classic (ETC)
  • Bitcoin – Dash (DASH)
  • Bitcoin – Ripple (XRP)

This naturally increased the transaction volume, here’s what’s happened since:

Poloniex Trade History: Gunbot trading Ether with Emotionless Strategy - more coins (Image: BIUK)
Poloniex Trade History: Gunbot trading Ether with Emotionless Strategy – more coins (Image: BIUK)

In a nutshell, Ether trading has continued solidly but Gunbot has also regularly bought and sold Litecoin, and Ethereum Classic, and also made single completed trades with Dash and Ripple. Bitcoin Cash is nowhere to be seen.

Profits so far, in Bitcoin:

  • Ethereum: 0.00059094
  • Litecoin: 0.00032900
  • Ethereum Classic: 0.00032669
  • Dash: 0.00007898
  • Ripple: 0.00013795
  • Total: 0.00146356 (about £10)

So not a bad start having been out of bot trading for some time.

Advanced Trading

One thing I like very much about the latest Gunbot is the charts in the user interface – they pretty much reproduce what you get in Poloniex or Trading View with the addition of clear markers of where Gunbot bought and sold.

Gunbot chart with buy/sell indicators (Image: BIUK)
Gunbot chart with buy/sell indicators (Image: BIUK)

What this highlighted for me, though, was that the Emotionless strategy is a bit ‘literal’. What I mean is that Gunbot is selling once it achieves the profit it has been set but is missing opportunities for greater profit. For example, in the middle of the screenshot shown we can see that Gunbot sold even though the market was rising fast and if it had waited a couple more minutes the profit would have been many times greater (perhaps even 10x).

I believe this consideration of trend is part of other strategies, particularly those using Trading Stop / Stop Limit (TSSL) which wasn’t an option in my previous Gunbot version. I’m therefore going to investigate that further before changing any more Gunbot settings, in particular increasing the trading stakes.

Bitcoin (BTC), Blog, Ethereum, Gunbot, Poloniex Exchange, Trading

Gunbot Crypto Trading 4: Your First Gunbot Trade

Previous posts:

Strategy

After my previous post, creating my first Gunbot Setup in this version of Gunbot using the Bollinger Band strategy, I had a change of heart. I decided to try the Emotionless strategy instead, something I don’t remember being an option in my previously installed versions.

Emotionless is described on the Wiki as follows:

“The Emotionless strategy is fully tuned and ready to use, even for novice traders! It’s meant to be a relatively safe strategy, with modest but steady gains.

“With this strategy, you don’t need to think about setting the right or best parameters: it’s all there already. You only need to set the basics like your trading limit and choose on which pairs you want to trade. Optionally, you can increase GAIN slightly.

“Behind the scenes, an advanced algorithm based on the Ichimoku cloud indicator does the hard work. The specifics will not be disclosed.”

Given I haven’t used Gunbot seriously in many months this seemed like a good bet. I cancelled the run and restarted it with the strategy set to Emotionless. I kept all other settings the same.

Trading

I then went to bed, and didn’t check the results until the next morning. Success! Gunbot had bought some Ether and sold it again at a higher price during the night.

I suspect you won’t be impressed if I say the profit made was just 0.00001482 BTC (worth about 10p) but that is to miss the point. The stake, remember, was just 0.002 BTC (£13) and the setting for GAIN is 0.6, i.e. aim to make a profit of 0.6%. In fact the profit is 0.74% so the bot has done really well.

Of course, once you have gained confidence that the bot is working then you naturally increase the stake. If it were set to 1 Bitcoin, for example, then each trade would make a profit of about £50 and you could get multiple trades in one day. 10 BTC would make you £500 per trade, and so on.

In this case I left the bot running unchanged and it has now made 3 complete trades (for a total profit of 2.25%). In any other field such a gain in 2 days would be unprecedented.

Here’s the record of transactions so far:

Poloniex Trade History: Gunbot trading Ether with Emotionless Strategy (Image: BIUK)
Poloniex Trade History: Gunbot trading Ether with Emotionless Strategy (Image: BIUK)

Note that the bot has since gone on to buy again, but has not yet sold. It will be interesting to see if it sells successfully or if the market drops and it’s left holding Ether it can’t sell – I’ll report back once the outcome is clear.

Update: Gunbot Crypto Trading 5: Emotionless Trading